Usama bin Ladin sägs nu vara död. På allvar. Även om min första spontana reaktion (som säkert inte var unik) efter beskedet var ett ‘är de verkliga säkra att det var han? Hur ska vi för övrigt reagera på händelsen? Några förslag från aktivisten Jim Wallis som poängterar – liksom många andra – att problemet med terrorism knappast är löst på en permanent basis och att krigen som följde efter 9/11 inte heller gjort världen bättre eller säkrare: ”The Bible takes evil seriously and clearly says that evildoers should be held accountable for their deeds, and the state has the legitimate and important role of bringing to justice those who perpetrate terrible crimes. Osama bin Laden was perhaps the most monstrous face of the monster of terrorism in our time. But killing bin Laden has certainly not ended the problem or threat of terrorism. And it also does not vindicate the decade of perpetual war, which has been the U.S. response to the horrible attacks on 9/11 that have also resulted in thousands of other innocent casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq.”

Och vad händer egentligen med en kropp som begravs i havet – och med havet omkring den? Några vetenskapliga och världsliga uppgifter från Dave Gilson, publicerat på Mother Jones. Är det exempelvis miljövänligt? Och hur vanligt är det numera? ”I have noticed a great increase in interest in burial at sea,” says Ann Rodney, an environmental protection specialist in the New England office of the Environmental Protection Agency’s ocean and coastal unit, which oversees burials in American waters. The agency doesn’t have hard data on how many Americans choose sea burial, but Rodney suspects the numbers, though small, are growing. ”Ten years ago, I might get one or two calls a year about it. Now I get at least one call a week.”

Kan den tidigare amerikanska Bush-administrationen ta åt sig äran för de nuvarande demokratirörelserna i mellanöstern? En som verkligen tvivlar på det är professor James Zogby som bedrivit en hel del studier av regionen och människors attityder där. På Huffington Post utvecklar han sina argument i frågan: ”Contrary to the Bush administration’s ideologically inspired projections, the invasion and occupation of Iraq and Israel’s war on its neighbors did not lead to democracy or even to progressive change. Instead, what was left in the wake of each of these conflicts was death and destruction, bitterness and suffering, and a deepened sectarian divide, coupled with a spreading of extremist fervor and intensified regional tension. Arab populations became roiled, Arab governments that had been making even modest moves toward change, pulled back and, overall, the region became more repressive and less free.”

Proteströrelserna som startade i Tunisien och Egypten i vintras är något annat, betonar Zogby: ” They have been inspirational — creating a new pride amongst publics who had long felt deflated and powerless to make change. They have been contagious – with tactics and slogans being copied or adapted to local settings, despite each country’s unique characteristics. And they have been purely Arab and, it bears repeating, self-generated. There were no would be ”Lawrences” or ”Rumsfelds” at work in any of these uprisings fashioning themselves as the shapers of the Arab’s destiny.”

The Economist tyckte till om situationen i Jemen för någon månad sedan: ”That things should have come to such a pass is not entirely Mr Saleh’s fault. His starkly impoverished, spectacularly rugged and bandit-ridden country is famously hard to govern. But his style of rule, with its acrobatic juggling of alliances with religious and tribal leaders, combined with nepotism and pleas for help from foreign powers spooked by Yemen’s chronic instability, has put the country into an increasingly untenable limbo. Even as regional clouds of revolutionary fervour gathered earlier this year, Mr Saleh provoked trouble with his plan to amend the constitution to allow himself more terms of office after his current one expires in 2013.”

And now for something…not entirely unrelated. Filmregissören Oliver Stone har tillsammans med historikern Peter Kuznick skrivit ett slags öppet brev till Barack Obama, vars regim blivit något av en besvikelse för dem, bland annat ifråga om ekonomin och synen på USA:s roll i världen.”Instead of modelling himself after Gorbachev and boldly championing deeply felt convictions and transformative policies, Obama has taken a page from the Bill (and Hillary) Clinton playbook and governed as a right-leaning centrist. While trying naively to ingratiate himself with an opposition bent solely on his defeat, he has repeatedly turned his back on those who put him in office. Surrounding himself with Wall Street-friendly advisers and military hawks, he has sent more than 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan; bailed out Wall Street banks while paying scant attention to the plight of the poor and working class; and enacted a tepid version of health reform that, while expanding coverage, represented a boondoggle for the insurance industry. And he has continued many of Bush’s civil rights abuses, secrecy obsessions and neoliberal policies that allow the continued looting of the real economy by those who are obscenely wealthy.”

Tyska forskare har grävt i arkiven och hittat mindre smickrande bekännelser från sina landsmän i armen under andra världskriget. Och så har vårt eget ikoniska internationella varumärke IKEA hamnat i skottgluggen för dålig behandling av amerikanska anställda, vilket föranleder syrliga kommentarer på Alternet: ”When it comes to ubiquitous symbols of mass American culture, the 1999 movie Fight Club aptly reminded us that bland Ikea furniture is now on par with Mom and Apple Pie. The film, of course, was lamenting more the ennui of homogenization than Ikea’s particular business model, because Ikea’s market saturation was always considered somewhat laudable thanks to the company’s seemingly special ethos. Based in Sweden, the blue-and-yellow behemoth was known to consumers as one of the few courageous anti-Walmarts in the big-box world — a firm whose Scandinavian-socialist flavor appeared to assure us that it was probably treating its workers better than most multinationals, thus giving America a rare haven of guilt-free shopping.”

”Several factors correlate with English ability. Wealthy countries do better overall. But smaller wealthy countries do better still: the larger the number of speakers of a country’s main language, the worse that country tends to be at English. This is one reason Scandinavians do so well: what use is Swedish outside Sweden? It may also explain why Spain was the worst performer in western Europe, and why Latin America was the worst-performing region: Spanish’s role as an international language in a big region dampens incentives to learn English.” konstaterar The Economist också.